01/18/15
Last December, Jackson-based Consumers Energy Co. filed for electric rate increases for residential and business customers in west and mid-Michigan. Consumers Energy provides only gas services to Southeast Michigan.

01/16/15
Chicago energy entrepreneur Michael Polsky is playing an improbably instrumental role in resolving a power crisis threatening to financially cripple Michigan's Upper Peninsula and derail the acquisition of a Chicago-based utility holding company.

01/14/15
Entergy Corp. acknowledged Tuesday that it didn't follow some radiation safety monitoring procedures during a refueling of its Palisades Nuclear Power Plant last year but says federal regulators should treat it as a low-level violation.

12/25/14
Stakeholders in the energy business in Michigan already have begun the conversations on the next wave of renewable-energy requirements that would kick in after current benchmarks are reached in 2015.

12/24/14 "As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound: He was dress'd all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnish'd with ashes and soot;"

12/18/14 "But come now, change thy theme, and sing of the building of the horse of wood, which Epeius made with Athena’s help, the horse which once Odysseus led up into the citadel as a thing of guile, when he had filled it with the men who sacked Ilion." —The Odyssey, Homer

12/17/14
Consumers Energy's $255 million Cross Winds Energy Park in Tuscola County has started serving electric customers. The utility estimated in April the wind park will have a 20-year economic impact of around $126 million in the state.

12/14/14
Kalamazoo-based Stryker Corp. faces stiff penalties, including $80 million in fines and settlements, related to allegations that a subsidiary distributed a device used in knee replacement surgery without approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reported Modern Healthcare, a sister publication of Crain's Detroit Business. Other statewide news: Ski industry hopes to repeat last winter's strong season; Generate energy from cows? There's methane to this madness

12/07/14
While I completely agree with Keith Crain's Nov. 24 column, "Last one to leave? The lights are already out," that we are not building enough new power plants for the future, his column misses the point of why we lose power every time we have a storm.

12/05/14
The Michigan House got on the renewable energy bandwagon in a controversial way by approving House Bill 5205 in a 63-46 vote and adding some hazardous industrial waste to its list of renewable energy raw materials.

12/05/14
The MPSC ordered DTE and Consumers to get more serious about trimming trees next year, especially by taking out trees outside of their normal rights-of-way if the trees or limbs could fall on power lines.

12/04/14
The White House is calling out Michigan's Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians as well as the cities of Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and others for leading their peers in efforts to address climate change.

12/02/14
Power was being gradually restored to some buildings and traffic signals by early afternoon today, after a widespread outage affected parts of downtown Detroit closed many government buildings, including some courthouses, and left intersections without working traffic lights.

11/30/14
We apologize to our Canadian neighbors for President Barack Obama's insulting disregard, the latest evidence in a press conference and speech delivered in Australia last week when he disparaged the XL Keystone pipeline. He basically described the project as one that would allow Canada to ship its oil to "world markets, not to the United States," making it easier to decide it would simply add to greenhouse gases and shouldn't be supported. Two things are wrong about that assessment.

11/30/14
Michigan's two largest utilities — Consumers Energy and DTE Energy Co. — are mounting a major public relations effort to make legislators and electric customers aware that a shortage of power generation reserve could occur in Michigan and the Midwest starting in 2016.

11/24/14
The Michigan Court of Appeals recently affirmed the Michigan Public Service Commission's July 2013 decision to grant a certificate of public convenience and necessity to Michigan Electric Transmission Co., a subsidiary of Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp.

11/23/14
Public Sector Consultants, an outfit in Lansing, has done a study that seems to conclude that our power generating system is becoming obsolete faster than we're replacing it. I can't help but think that our legislators and regulators are making it unnecessarily hard for power companies and others to create new ways to generate energy.